


The Story Behind A Wish: The Soapbox Derbies

by EagleOfTheNinth



Category: Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (RPG)
Genre: Gen, No Dialogue, Nonbinary Character, Shenanigans, but people thought this was good enough for Ao3 anyway!, do they count as canon nb? idk, taking a wish from the list of 101 samples in the GMD book and running with it, the misadventures of Chuubo and company
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 18:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21324826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EagleOfTheNinth/pseuds/EagleOfTheNinth
Summary: Sometimes, you don't even have to MAKE a wish to have a misadventure.
Kudos: 6





	The Story Behind A Wish: The Soapbox Derbies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caramelchameleon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelchameleon/gifts).

> This is for caramelchameleon because they got me into this fandom. It may be short and silly, but I am happy to expand this far-too-small category.

Thanks to the intervention of Seizhi Schwan, this wish was never actually made, but it managed to go wrong anyway.

Upon Chuubo announcing his intention to wish for a soapbox derby on the following Sunday, Seizhi pointed out that there was no need to bring the Engine into it. Seven friends were quite enough for a respectable race and part of the fun of a soapbox cart was getting to build it. Instead of wishing for it, one merely had to _organise _it.

Chuubo agreed immediately, opined that Seizhi had good ideas and was the Brainy One in their friendship, and the two of them set about doing this.

Rinley Yatskaya was delighted with the idea. So was Jasper Irinka, once it had been explained to her what a soapbox race was. Natalia Koutolika was uncertain but proved willing to be persuaded. Miramie Mesmer declined to trust herself to a soapbox cart but agreed to watch at the finish line with a camera in case of an apparent tie.

Leonardo de Montreal agreed almost at once, with an expression that suggested he knew something that Chuubo and Seizhi didn’t. In retrospect, that should have tipped them off as to what would come next.

Each participant went off on their own to create their cart, except Seizhi, who had to deal with rather unhelpful help from their big brother Laodemus, and Jasper, who persuaded Natalia to help her build hers as she had no idea how to do it. Jasper’s first thought had been to ask Leonardo, but he refused; again, this _should _have set off warning bells.

The agreed day dawned, and the participants gathered at the hill in the park where the last great soapbox derby had taken place (that event of uncertain date but canonical truth in which Seizhi had very nearly beaten Chuubo). The finish line was marked; Miramie blew a whistle; and the race began.

Leonardo won. By a landslide.

The rest of them should really have _expected _that he would use nightmare science to build a cart. (It had looked normal. _At first._)

Leonardo was immediately mobbed by the other five participants, who complained of foul play. He claimed that no rule against nightmare science had been stated and it was their lookout if they had not thought to apply it to the problem. They pointed out that none of them knew how to do nightmare science. Leonardo retorted that _that _was their lookout too.

Chuubo demanded a rematch with every racer using an explicitly ordinary cart. Seizhi, Natalia and Rinley backed him up. Leonardo laughed at them infuriatingly. Then Jasper suggested, hoping to keep the peace, that there be a rematch where Leonardo sat out and created nightmare science soapbox carts for everyone else.

I am afraid that most of them thought this was a great idea.

A certain amount of time passed and the day of the third race arrived. This time there were only four participants; besides Leonardo sitting out, Natalia had opted to do so as well so that she could be ready with a first aid kit in case of disaster. (Miramie had refused entirely to get involved, which probably made her the most sensible person present.)

The four variations on the Mk II Patented Astounding Nightmare Soapbox Racer looked…well, they looked the way things created by Leonardo de Montreal _usually _looked, put it that way. A wise person might have thought better than to step into one, but Chuubo and Rinley had never had any fear or even conception of consequences, Jasper trusted Leonardo unconditionally, and Seizhi had reached the point they often did in such shenanigans and decided that the only way to salvage the situation was to go all in.

The race began.

The carts blew past the finish line in seconds and kept going (to the delight of Leonardo, who _knew _he’d done even better than with the Mk I). Their drivers were barely aware of this, lost as they were in the gleeful terror of sheer speed. It was sheer bad luck that their continued course headed straight for one of the park’s flowerbeds, and even worse luck that the Angel of Fortitude (aka Principal Entropy II) happened to be pruning rosebushes there. Sometimes these things just happen. It is probably an as-yet undiscovered property of Town as a whole.

Before he knew what was happening, Principal Entropy was run over by-

  * Seizhi, leading the pack by a hair; they claimed later that the steering on their cart failed at the crucial moment, but I suspect the fact that they were too drunk on glory dreams of actually beating Chuubo this time round to properly look where they were going had something to do with it as well
  * Chuubo, immediately behind them, who had genuinely lost control of his cart entirely
  * Rinley, who _deliberately _steered their cart to do so because they thought it would be funny
  * and lastly, Jasper, who saw her three friends run over the Principal in quick succession, got confused, and thought she was meant to do it too

-all of whom promptly crashed into the (extremely thorny, woody and tangled) rosebushes and came to a halt.

Seizhi, of course, came off the worst from this, having no miraculous powers of the sort that would prevent physical harm, but perhaps whichever Imperator rules the estate of Small and Nervous Creatures looked down kindly upon them, as they emerged from the wreckage with several minor burns, some quite deep gouges in arms and legs from the rose thorns, and a badly sprained ankle, but no more serious harm done. Chuubo, Rinley, and Jasper, who did have such powers, were no more than slightly scratched up; the Principal, similarly, was unhurt once he had gotten his breath back.

Natalia handed out antiseptic and bandages and pointedly refrained from saying I Told You So.

Chuubo, Seizhi and Jasper were suitably contrite. The Angel of Fortitude forgave them, with the condition that they never do that again, please. Chuubo and Jasper offered to help Seizhi to the nearest clinic, an offer which Seizhi accepted.

Leonardo, suffering the twinges of his Mechanism of Original Sin, agreed to return the carts to his laboratory and take them apart.

But Rinley, who could perhaps have used the services of a similar mechanism themself, managed to steal the least-damaged cart when Leonardo’s back was turned. They drew on the power of their wishing heart to more or less fix it and spent the following week terrorising the streets of Fortitude by going on joyrides in it, often with Prince Eduard Fujimoto of the Rats riding shotgun. This only ended when they accidentally drove it into Big Lake and were forced to abandon it to save themself.

Luckily for them, it was a Saturday, and the chaos created by the wish Chuubo made the next day rather distracted everyone from being as angry with Rinley as they rightly should.

But that’s another story.


End file.
